Chương 57: Corn Harvest

Days 123-161 Awst 13th - Medi 20th (August 13th through September 20th) The month after the wheat harvest was a busy blur. The most notable event was the arrival of our grain silo and two 1, 000-bushel corn cribs. The grain silo held 300 bushels of grain. We planned to keep 2, 000 bushels of corn, thus the two corn cribs. I would have liked to keep all 3, 000 we were anticipating needing for biofuel, but the Trade Guild wanted at least a third of the crop. The corn cribs were definitely a blast from the past.

I had never seen one in use myself. Modern combines and drying methods ensured corn was properly dried so it didn't mold. But on homesteads, these open-air silos were employed to let the corn dry out over the winter. There was a solid roof, but the sides were a magically reinforced mesh, and the whole thing sat on legs that ensured there was airflow at the bottom as well.

The Trade Guild employed Fire Wizards to dry the corn they took in, but they charged an exorbitant amount to come out to a homestead to perform the task. With our hay sales and the 600 gold from the sale of the wheat, we had over 800 gold. The silos each cost 100 gold, and then we decided to buy a worker's cabin so Colin had a place to stay while our farmhouse was being built after the potato harvest. Since we were already in year 4, most of the people who needed silos had them, so there was no waitlist.

A crew of Craftsmen came out with mostly pre-fabricated buildings that they put up in less than a week. For an additional 25 gold per building, a wizard came out and enchanted them with strength and rodent deterrent runes. I found the price outrageous, but I sure as heck wasn't going to turn them down if it would keep the crops safe. The same crews built the cabin.

My dumb self thought it came with at least a small stove to heat the cabin, but when the crew left with it completely empty, Emily told me the heater would be an additional 25 gold. We bought Colin a new bed for 10 more gold. By the time we were done with this round of buildings, we'd spent 425 of our 835 gold. We also harvested a majority of our garden. We stewed a huge quantity of tomatoes for the winter. I also introduced Emily to a knockoff version of spaghetti sauce. I couldn't find all the right ingredients.

Basil was unknown to Emily, and oregano was very expensive. There was a plant native to the continent that they also called oregano. It was mildly spicy, but tasted close enough. There was also a flowering plant called wild bergamot that Emily had harvested which kind of tasted like basil to me. With those two herbs, a little sugar, and a whole lotta garlic, we had a pasta sauce that all three of us loved.

Emily didn't let me have the kitchen completely to myself, but she did let me prepare the sauce and get the flavors the way I wanted them. In what was a mild mind blown moment. I also found out that you had to cure squash by leaving them in a hot, humid place for a couple of weeks. That was a complete surprise. I just thought you picked them and put them in a dark place until they were ready to eat.

I'd never been a huge squash guy in the first place, so I guess it wasn't too shocking I didn't know how to store them. Colin and I also had to go through the potato field two weeks before harvest and cut all the top parts of the plants off the vines. This helped the potatoes start to harden up, ensuring that the skins would get tough. Back on Earth, we would have sprayed a desiccant on the plants to kill the top plant and help harden the potato skins.

Honestly, the more I thought about things at home, we had to spray a lot of things on potatoes to ensure they thrived. We sprayed herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides on them. There were large parts of the growing season that you weren't even supposed to go into a potato field because of all the chemicals that were used. Our potatoes were far safer. The last big thing of note was that another Machinist came into town with a new machine he called a corn binder.

He made a big tour of the homesteads in the area to show it off. It looked like a one-row harvester to me. On Earth, I'd seen old museum pieces that looked the same. He still wanted us to pick the ears before he used the cutter, so he wasn't very well received. A lot of farmers picked the corn and then just let their pigs and cattle wander the fields for a couple of months to eat most of the stalks. This had the added benefit of providing fertilizer for the crops.

I didn't have enough animals, and he offered to do the whole 20 acres for 25 gold, so I told him he could come out after we picked the corn. We could use the stalks for bedding, or maybe even sell them to the Newtons or some other rancher to feed through the winter. On Earth, we had sometimes rented out corn fields that weren't green chopped to ranchers, but I was really glad Emily knew I was from Earth.

I thought farm animals couldn't go into a farm plot, but it turned out that once a field was harvested, you could toggle that off to let animals eat the grains and plants that were left behind. I explained to her what YouTube was just so I could continuously say I needed a YouTube video to help me understand everything. The almanac was also super helpful, but I had to learn a surprising amount about how to run a pre-industrial farm with System rules thrown in for good measure.

Modern machines and electricity for things like drying crops really took a lot of the work away from modern farmers. Of course, it wasn't like there wasn't a ton of stress on modern farmers as well. Every machine the family had bought in the last ten years cost at least half a million dollars. A bad crop year would still have caused us financial hardship. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

The last big thing we had to do was buy enough food and provide lodging for eighteen men for three entire weeks. When Wizard Johnstone came back out to tell me that for now the bishop wanted me to move forward with my plans, I talked to him about my lodging issues. Johnstone told me that the Trade Guild actually had a bunch of two-man tents with cots that they never used. They had been purchased for just this scenario. I paid a gold per week per tent.

He also told me the bishop would come out and administer the Samhain festival rites himself. That was ominous. Between the tents and food, we spent a majority of the rest of our 400 gold getting things ready for our help.

Day 161 Medi 20th (September 20th) On September 20th, the Trade Guild, with Wizard Johnstone in tow once again, rolled onto the homestead with all three of the work crews. I'd only planned on having one crew show up today, but Johnstone told me that was just ridiculous. The crews could come in and pick all the corn, then I'd show them how we were going to dig up the potatoes. On Earth during the time period technology seemed to be, there were already horse-drawn machines that pulled potatoes out of the ground.

Unfortunately, since no one ever grew them here, that wasn't the case here. Once everyone had been unloaded, Johnstone called over the three foremen of the crews. He didn't bother to ask for their names. Unsurprising, since they were unlanded laborers. He might be pretty decent for a noble, but he still had some prejudices.

"Men," he said.

"Today, you will be picking corn. You may be wondering why there are three crews, and why you were contracted for three entire weeks." He gestured towards me, then continued speaking.

"This gentleman, Mr Jacobsen, has a special crop that he wants you all to help him harvest. Once we have picked the corn, he will introduce you to it, as well as show you the proper way to harvest it." I waved and said hello. The three men nodded their hellos back to me. Then Johnstone spoke again.

"We will fill first the Trade Guild Wagons with a thousand bushels, then you all will begin filling Mr Jacobsen's corn cribs. I will be leaving a wagon here for you to move the corn once we've taken the rest back to town. Are there any questions pertinent to the corn?" They all shook their heads, so Johnstone dismissed them and then turned to speak with me.

"I have received another missive from the good bishop. He has reaffirmed his decision to harvest all of your potatoes, for the 12 gold per bushel price. He says that he has spoken to the Emperor. The Emperor has expressed a keen interest in the outcome of this harvest." I pursed my lips, a habit I'd picked up from Emily.

"What sort of impression did you get from talking to him? And he's still coming out for Samhain?" Johnstone nodded.

"He is. I will be honest with you. I feel like something big is afoot. I was sent a System message from Emperor Harold demanding that I only speak with the bishop, and you, about this crop."

"How unusual is that?" I asked pensively. Johnstone laughed.

"Unusual. Now, I cannot say it is the first time I have ever received such a message, but it has definitely only happened a few times. Each time was similar to yours, though. Where we had some special trade deal that was going to lead to an unexpected class evolution."

"I see," I said.

"And you hadn't talked to anyone else about it already?" Johnstone looked at me incredulously.

"Are you serious? Of course I kept my mouth shut. I know how this empire works. You know, I really do like you so far. If I had told anyone else about this, it is almost certain that you would have been disappeared somehow. Our empire is a dangerous place for anyone looking to climb the political ladder." I laughed bitterly.

"I don't have any desire to climb the ladder." Johnstone looked at me for a few moments before he said, "You know, I almost believe you. I really want to, but why else would you have planted these potatoes? I get why you are all the way out here, but why did your backers not provide their own men to deal with this harvest?" I didn't have an answer to that question. Johnstone waited for me to respond, but when I didn't, he finally said, "These men are the bishop's. They're all sworn to him.

Watch what you say around them tomorrow." He gestured towards the cornfield, then said, "Come, let us go supervise." The corn harvest was very different from how I was used to back on Earth. We combined corn to be ground up for animal feed, but we actually green chopped most of it. Green choppers cut the corn when it still had more moisture in it. The cob and stems would be chopped into small pieces and shot into trucks from a spout on the side of the green chopper.

The trucks would take the material to dairies or feedlots where they would put it in large pits to cure for a few months. The corn would actually ferment a bit to allow for better digestion for cows. I had loved the sour-sweet smell of a silage pit since I was a child. Here, the harvest was a bit of a pain in the rear. Luckily, we were dealing with weather that the almanac said was a bit cooler than average. It only got up to 80 degrees, and there was a decent breeze.

The leaves on a corn stalk were sharp, and they would leave paper cuts like scratches that really itched if you weren't wearing long sleeves and gloves. Back home, when you saw work crews that were de-tassling sweet corn, it didn't matter if it was 105 degrees out; they would still wear full-coverage clothing to avoid the cuts. Here, the eighteen men who were quickly picking corn were just as covered up as workers on Earth. The man with the experimental corn binder also showed up as expected.

He had a single horse and a machine that looked just like a corn binder on Earth. His still required him to bind the cornstalks by hand, but it did do an efficient job of cutting and bundling the corn stalks. The machine was V-shaped, with a blade that cut the corn stalks about three inches off the ground.

Right where the blade cut, there were rotating teeth that moved when the machine moved that helped pull the cornstalks to the back part of the machine, which had sides and a back that could hold ten cornstalks at a time. Once he cut around twenty stalks, he'd have to stop and use pre-cut lengths of twine to tie them together. The back opened up and after he tied them up he would set the bundle sitting upright. In its current format, it was not very fast.

With my incredibly thick strand of corn, he barely made it further than ten feet at a time before he had to stop to move the bundles. The work crew picked the corn with what I would call borderline supernatural speed. After they'd already picked half the field in only two hours, I asked Johnstone about it. He grinned and said, "Do you really think the bishop would have any men on his personal labor crews who were not level 20? These men are only Laborers, but they're top notch Laborers."